BONAVENTURA BETTERA
Bergamo, 1663 – documented until 1718
Still life with musical instruments
oil on canvas, cm 75×100
This painting has been published with the correct attribution to Bonaventura Bettera a number of times and depicts a familiar display of musical instruments framed by sumptuous drapes, to which a globe is added on the right – an object frequently included in paintings by Bonaventura’s father, Bartolomeo (1639 – 1699). The works belongs to the characteristic production of this family of painters from Bergamo, specialists in the genre who followed the example of Evaristo Baschenis. The emergence of this distinctive trend in Italian still-life painting, typically associated with Lombardy, was closely linked to the extraordinary reputation of the violinmakers’ workshops in nearby Cremona.
Only two signed paintings by Bonaventura Bettera are known, around which the small corpus of the artist has been reconstructed: one dated 1718 from Palazzo Passi in Bergamo (and now in a private collection in La Spezia), and another originally painted for Palazzo Greppi in Milan, now in a private collection in Bergamo.
The scholar Marco Rosci, who pblished the work in two studies of 1971 and 1985, contributed to making Bettera’s work better known, emphasizing in Bonaventura’s art a “transition towards an 18th century decorative taste” characterized by “a decisive inclination to render the chromatic tones lighter and cooler” when compared to the paintings of his father Bartolomeo, whose style generally reveals a more analytical approach.
Pubblications:
“Bettera e la maniera Bergamasca”, in “Baschenis, Bettera & Co: Produzione e mercato della natura morta del Seicento in Italia”, edited by Marco Rosci, Gorlich, Milan, 1971, p. 61, fig. 154 e p. 154.
“Collezioni private bergamasche”, LIX, Monumenta Bergomensia, Bergamo, 1981,vol. II, tav. CXXXVIII.
“Bartolomeo e Bonaventura Bettera”, edited by Marco Roschi in “I pittori bergamaschi. Il Seicento, vol. III, Poligrafiche Bolis, Bergamo, 1985, p.166, no. 33.
“Bartolomeo Bettera: la sonata barocca”,exhibition catalogue edited by Alberto Cottino, text by Giulia Palloni, Credito Bergamasco, Bergamo, 2008, no. 17, pp. 70-71.